


echoes of a city that's long overgrown

by cassi0pei4



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 15:47:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassi0pei4/pseuds/cassi0pei4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both terrible people.  </p><p>(Abby can be honest with herself about this, even if she couldn't ever admit it to anyone else.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	echoes of a city that's long overgrown

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Florence + the Machine's "Heartlines" -- the full line being "Echoes of a city that's long overgrown/Your heart is the only place that I call home."
> 
> I mainlined The 100 over the past week and lo and behold it contains my favorite het trope, i.e. two leaders who seem to hate and love each other all at once. However, there is no fic for them -- WHY UNIVERSE WHY -- so I wrote some.

They're both terrible people.

(Abby can be honest with herself about this, even if she couldn't ever admit it to anyone else.)

She betrayed the trust of her husband. She killed him. She locked up her daughter. She sent her to the ground to die or starve or freeze -- or any of the hundred other hardships Clarke had to bare. She made her daughter bare the burden of a civilization before she'd even reached her eighteenth year.

And Marcus? Marcus Kane sent his best friend out of an airlock. He had his best friend's daughter locked away in solitary confinement. He was ready to let his mentor die on the operating table, ready to kill her for trying to keep him alive. He refused to let her look for her daughter on the ground, refused to send others to do so instead. He had her lashed when she did it anyway.

He killed 320 innocent people.

She should find him nauseating, should feel hatred welling up from the pit of her stomach at the very thought of him.

But she doesn't - and she can't explain why that's not the case. She can't explain the desperate sense of need that she feels instead. She only knows that when he left her side, made her chancellor in his stead and ventured back into the wilderness, it felt so very wrong not to have him there.

~

It all started on the Ark. For a few terrifying hours, they were all going to die. She was never going to have a chance at seeing her daughter again, and everything they had done, all the lies and deceit and sacrifices were for nothing.

And he was there, right there next to her. There was a look that passed between them -- a look that seemed to be filled with all her hopelessness and all his misery. They were both filled to the brim with a disappointment so profound it seemed to wipe all meaning from the world -- and yet, they could share that look and both still _live_. And if they could do that, then anything seemed real, anything seemed possible.

And in moments they were fused together, tongues meeting teeth until she grew too impatient started to bite instead: his lips, his neck, his ear. He pressed her against a wall, dizzy from oxygen deprivation and sensory overload and she wrapped her legs above his hips and reached her hands under his shirt to feel the warmth of his skin against her too cold hands.

He didn't trust himself to hold her upright. He pulled back, stripping off his own clothes while she removed hers with matching utilitarian, economic movements. No second of oxygen wasted.

He led her down onto a medical cot -- they didn't care that it was the medbay, that anyone could walk in. Why should they? They were all dying regardless and he wanted to cover her, wanted to feel what it was like to trap such a force of nature. She welcomed it. She wanted to be covered, to be pinned down so that her life, her mind, would stop spinning out of control.

Neither of them lasted long -- adrenaline is a powerful aphrodisiac for them both.

The call from Jaha came before either of them had even caught their breath. And then there was hope again, and the Ark was crashing through the atmosphere, and what a beautiful atmosphere it was: a startling blue stretching further than her mind could imagine with shimmering water stretching out to the tree line.

~

Abby can't explain what draws them to each other, like gravitational bodies locked in perpetual orbit. She only knows the profound sense of home she feels when she's around him. He knows her, really knows her: her hopes and her nightmares, her sins and her grief, her despair and her perseverance. He knows that she still cries when she loses a patient, but that she never lets Jackson see the tears. He knows that she refuses to cut her hair, even though it's grown into a nuisance, because Jake liked it long and she refuses to give that up. He knows that she regularly gives a part of her daily rations to one of the Culling's orphans, knows that she'd just argue that growing children need it more than she does if he brought it up, knows that her acceptance of half his rations on those days is closest he'll get to her taking care of herself.

Sometimes Abby tries to imagine meeting someone else -- someone not from the Ark, a peaceful grounder perhaps. In her minds eye -- in her dreams at night -- he looks like Jake, smiles like Jake used to, makes love to her like she remembers Jake did. But she can never play the dream much further. She imagines having to tell him what happened on the Ark, about the look on Jake's face as he was pulled back into the void, about the culling and the little girl who lost her father and her sight all in one day, about how she once sacrificed her own daughter for a chance of the human race living on. She sees the look of disgust, the same one she plays again and again in her mind, the look she imagines accompanied her daughter's words just a few weeks ago.

(Marcus never gives that look to anyone but himself and only then when he thinks no one else is looking. She still notices. It's the look he had when he brought back his crucified men, the same one he wore when his mother died on his watch from a bomb he should have found. Even when he was moments away from floating her, she never saw him show her the sort of hatred he's shown for himself.)

Marcus returns from his mission with a tentative peace, a look of horror and the first real hope that Abby's felt since the smell of burnt corpses first filled her nose and mouth in the forest. Midway through the first hour of tense negotiation the grounder camp was besieged with what they refer to as Reapers, mutilated savages so devolved that they had turned canabalistic. Together the Grounders and the "Skypeople," as Marcus tells her those from the Ark are known, fought off the attack, and the success bought a truce -- at a high price, one of Marcus' men was knocked unconscious and the corpse dragged away into a tunnel by the surviving Reapers, a fate that Abby can hardly bare to consider.

In the spirit of their new peace Marcus asks about the 100 -- after all if the Grounders don't have them, who could? It's the first time the Grounders show him true fear. Grounders stare down Reapers without blinking, but they refer to the Mountain Men only in hushed tones. Marcus' men wheedle stories out of the less senior warriors, those who know enough to have something to speak of, but not so much to know they should stay silent. They tell stories of cages and needles, of weapons like the Skypeople but block-like clothes that cover them head-to-toe.

And Marcus knows enough to know that the stories must mean Mount Weather wasn't left unused when the bombs fell nearly a century ago. He knows enough to know that the fire that burned all those corpses must have been large enough to attract something much worse than the Grounders it was intended for.

Abby's not sure what to think, but that doesn't stop her from thinking everything at once. Why would the Mount Weather survivors take Clarke and the others? What could the "Mountain Men," the people who share the same ancestors as those from the Ark, possibly want from bunch of teenagers if they already have possessions of guns and food and water? Was Clarke safe, even if imprisoned within the mountain? Or could the stories of cages where you slowly starved until faceless figures hung you up to bleed to death possibly be more than Grounder legend?

"We'll find her, Abby" Marcus says, as he watches her mind racing with one terrible scenario after another.

"They have a Mountain full of supplies, Marcus, and we -- we can barely keep everyone fed." She can't bare more hope, not now, not when she's sitting on a knife's edge of watching it all be pulled away again.

"We'll find her. We'll figure it out, and we'll bring her home." His hand comes to rest in the small of her back, warm and solid.

"When did you become so positive?" she says, with a half laugh of fatigue.

"It helps not to be Chancellor," he replies, mouth curving up at the corner.

~

That night rain pours down in the heaviest sheets they've seen since their arrival, sending rivers of mud through the camp and a branch through the roof of Abby's tent. She's unharmed -- her adrenal glands are so reactive these days that her reflexes are nearly spasmodic -- but still temporarily homeless. Marcus insists she stay with him. They've never done anything like this. They've only shared a few quick fucks, but after enough near death experiences, Abby's decided she can't be bothered to worry about what it means -- for them, for the camp, for anyone.

She's drenched from the rain. All the sweat stuck to her skin has been washed away and replaced with mud and leaves caked up to her knees. Marcus' tent is protected from the wind by the Ark's wreckage and mercifully free of mud. Abby backs in, leaving her legs sticking out of the small flap. She shucks her shoes first before reaching for her belt and pushing off her pants, leaving both outside the tent to be washed clean by the rain, or at least dried out in the morning. Her bare legs are freezing from the wet and the night air, and she climbs under the survival blanket -- thin but insulating.

Marcus tried very hard not to react immediately to the image of Abby slowly stripping off her wet clothes and situating herself next to him, but exhaustion has destroyed his usually profound self-control and Abby seems to be shivering as she tries to get comfortable and it would be simply ridiculous to have been inside of her but not hold her now.

He wraps himself around her, her back to his front, his arms pulling her in, her legs intwined with his. His mouth rests just where her neck meets her ear.

They both consider moving things forward -- she would turn around, he would kiss her slowly until she moaned in spite of herself -- but they're both asleep before anything happens.

Abby wakes to black silence. The rain has stopped and the only noise is the wind moving through the trees around their encampment. Even that soft rustling is exciting in it's own way to someone who's ever moment was spent with the low thrum of electricity in the Ark.

She's turned in the night. One arm has wedged itself in the warm hollow where their bodies meet and her leg has slid in between his two, leaving her half turned, balanced against the solid weight of his body. In the strange nocturnal light of the moon that her eyes sense out with widened pupils she can make out the gray profile of his face, the tension knotting his eyebrows in a facsimile of their daily expression. Her had reaches out to soften the line there with a feather touch she thought she'd lost somewhere along the way.

It's a mistake. Marcus reacts with a soldier's training, grasping her limp wrist with crushing force, twisting and pinning it to the ground as he twists, one knee pressing her thoracic cage firming into the rain-softened ground. It takes him only a second to realize his mistake. Abby can see the moment precisely, even in the darkness.

"God, Abby --" Marcus recoils, almost as reflexively as he attacked, retreating back to his corner of the tent, breathing hard.

"It's my fault," she says quickly. "I shouldn't have woken you like that."

Marcus's hands weave into his own short hair, his breathe still accelerated from shock.

"Has it been this way for long?" Abby asks.

Marcus looks up at her and she can read his answer in the pained expression: since the Culling.

Abby moves slowly closer to him. He's seated, but hunched in the low ceiling of their small tent. She sits as close as possible with her legs brushing up against his, face meeting face. She's shorter than he is, especially seated and she has to raise herself up onto her knees in order to reach his face. She touches her lips to his brow where just moments ago her finger brushed.

It's awkward, this position, but somehow all the more meaningful for it's lack of grace. They're not graceful people. They're survivors.

Abby leans back.

"They go away over time." She says and he knows without asking what she means. He knows that she must have had dreams of Jake frozen in the vacuum of space, asking her how she could have betrayed him; dreams of Clarke, angry, even violent, screaming at her mother for a crime Abby had no choice but to commit; or dreams of Clarke, begging for death as she's tortured by faceless men, never even knowing her mother was looking for her.

He reaches out to brush a few long strands of hair that caught the moonlight back from her face. He lets his hand rest in her hair and pulls her to him, kissing her as softly as he can manage with the adrenaline still pumping through his veins.

Abby pulls herself closer to him, her legs folding over his, but she can't feel enough of him, can't get close enough to his warmth and his solidity. She pulls him back. Straddling his torso with her legs before leaning back to urge him on top of her supine form.

She arches her back and brings her leg up to above his hip. She's acutely aware of how threadbare their undergarments have become, thin, fabric barriers between their skin.

His lips move down her body: her neck, the hollow of her collarbone, her nipple, the too sharp jut of her hip bone.

"Marcus," she sighs. It feels incredible but he's too soft, too gentle. Her fingers weave into his hair to pull, but he won't take the hint.

"Marcus--" and now there's more urgency in her voice. She's too tense already for the tease to be pleasurable. She needs more, needs to be overwhelmed. "Marcus, dammit, I can't, not like this, not now, I need --"

She should have known he'd take it as a challenge. If she needs more, he'll give it to her. He'll give her anything. His fingers rake through her, his finger nails scratching hard enough to hurt. The sharp pain is blissful. Her neck snaps back as the electric pleasure shoots up her spine. His hands reach around to cup her ass, before sliding up higher and brushing the scars on her lower back. She should be disgusted at the reminder, but it only keys her up more. Her hips buck up, hard enough that Marcus has to move his forearm to her stomach to hold her down. The fingers of his other hand reach to press inside of her, stretching her, just fast enough that there's an edge of pain. Abby's breathes come in gasps. She's trying as hard as she can to stay quiet but her moans morph instead to small whimpers in the back of her throat that must have been designed to drive him mad.

"God, Marcus, please --" Abby pants, voice distorted with need.

Marcus replaces his lips with his thumb, rocking circles, alternating with too-sharp pressure.

"Come on Abby. Come for me." His voice rakes over her like a low hum of electricity. "You're going to come for me and then I'm going to fuck you senseless."

The sounds of a curse falling from his straight-laced lips pushes her -- cursing -- over the edge.

She's lost her mind. She's fucking Marcus Kane -- on Earth -- and nothing has ever felt this good.

She pulls him and kisses to taste herself on his mouth. She rolls them over so that she can straddle him. He tries to sit upright to keep his mouth on hers, but she pushes him back. She sits up just shuck the thin cotton barrier between them and then their pressed together, but Abby's in no hurry now. She grinds down on him, and the pleasure is so intense that he has to shut his eyes to the image of her.

"Look at me." And he's helpless but to obey her. With his eyes so well adjusted to the dark now that he can make out every contour of her frame, can just see the sheen of sweat that catches the moonlight through the seam of the tent. He watches as she reaches down -- god -- to guide him in her, watches as her legs tense and lower her down.

He can't help but close his eyes then. The feel of her is too overwhelming. He can't think, he knows he's speaking but he doesn't know what words he's saying. His hands hold her hips stable, but now never once stray to her back. The anger that fuels her, fueled them both moments ago is spent, leaving only desperation in it's wake.

"Abby, Abby, Abby," her name is on his every exhalation. She leans down, taking her weight on her arms, so that she can whisper to him.

"Marcus -- God, Marcus." Her lips meet his until he has to pull back for air. He's breathing like he's in pain, so much so that for a split second Abby worries something is injured, but then he pivots them, so that he's on top, and her legs are at a higher angle, so that he can drive into her, holding her hips in a grip so tight it bruises, and thrusting faster until he looks down on her and it overwhelms him.

He rolls aside to catch his breath. A moment later he feels around for clothes and in moments he's half-dressed and stepped out of the tent, with the speed of a well-trained soldier. Before Abby can begin to process her worry, he's returned with a small shiny object. He sits down next to her and opens the thermos to pour out sterling clear, cold water, into the corresponding small silver cup and offer it to Abby.

She smiles as she takes the cup. It's ridiculous, the little things that seem so profound these days. Her daughter might be dying and probably still hates her and the man she just fucked scarred her back less than fourteen days ago.

She raises the cup to her lips. "How very gentlemanly of you," she says before draining the contents and handing it back.

He refills it, smirking, the sort of smirk that manages to convey humor and incredulity and disgust all at once. And that's why this cannot stop. He understands.

He drains the cup before meeting her glance again.

"I try, Chancellor," he says with a smile.

They fall asleep in each others arms.

~

The morning sunlight burns away what's left of Abby's caution. She wakes early enough to watch the sky shift from purples to reds before the sun even reaches the horizon. She caught a very unlucky rabbit as she walked along the edge of the tree line and shoved her revulsion down as she slit it's throat and cleaned it for roasting. It's odd -- her medical expertise makes her both a remarkably adept and appalling butcher.

The roasting's close to finished when Kane seeks her out, following the smoke of her small fire to the edge of the camp.

"You should have taken a weapon," he says, gesturing to the gun he's shouldered.

"There are patrols guarding the boundaries. Besides, the Grounders are our friends now, remember?"

Kane sits down next to her, both of their eyes fixated on the low flames.

They sit in silence, eat the best breakfast they've had since arriving on Earth. Kane can sense that Abby's preparing to say something, the same way the Grounders seem to sense a oncoming thunderstorm from a change in the air.

"I'm going to Mount Weather."

It's the sort of statement that's so final and absurd and _Abby_ that Kane can't manage to immediately reply.

"I know--" Abby puts down the small bones she'd been holding and turns to him, anticipating his objections, "I know, but Marcus, what are we supposed to do? Wait? Why -- For more intel? We've already heard everything the Grounders can offer. For some sign from the 'Mountain Men'? We crashed here weeks ago and if the Grounders noticed with no technology more advanced than their eyes, whoever occupies that Mountain must have. If they've taken our kids why haven't they taken us -- what could they possibly want with a group of children, Marcus?" Her voice breaks on the word 'children' and he knows that all she can think of is Clarke, young and innocent and in danger.

She's turned away from him now and fixed her gaze instead on the small embers still glowing in her dying fire. She knows if she looked at him the anger would overwhelm her. How dare he feel concern for her -- doesn't he know that it's those kids that need his concern and not her? She has to make him understand.

"I'm going to Mount Weather and I'm bringing them back."

She looks up at him now, daring him to tell her no, daring him to try and stop her.

His expression is pained, worry and regret and fear all mixing together.

He only says, "Ok."

She can't believe her ears.

"On one condition."

There's the Kane she remembers.

"I'm coming with you."

**Author's Note:**

> Give me feedback. Feedback is love. (Including the kind that points out that I can't spell or type properly.)


End file.
